BEIRUT - Israel's military appears to have deliberately bombed civilians in Lebanon and some of its strikes constitute war crimes, U.S.-based rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Thursday.

The comments came as the Israel Defense Forces released the results of an investigation into an air strike on a building in the southern Lebanese town of Qana, in which dozens of people were killed. The probe found that the IDF made a mistake, but charges that Hezbollah guerrillas used civilians as shields for their rocket attacks.

A Tyre hospital on Thursday revised the number of casualties resulting from Israel's air strike on the south Lebanese village of Qana from 52 down to 28.

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On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch questioned the death toll in the Qana attack. The international group listed the names of 28 known dead from the attack and said that 13 others were missing and might still be buried under the rubble. The discrepancy was attributed to an assumption that only nine of the people who took shelter in the basement of the building survived, but it emerged that at least 22 escaped, the group said.

HRW said Israel's contention that Hezbollah fighters were hiding among Lebanese civilians did not justify its "systematic failure" to distinguish between civilians and combatants.

"In some instances, Israeli forces appear to have deliberately targeted civilians," HRW said in a statement accompanying a report released Thursday.

"The failures cannot be dismissed as mere accidents and cannot be blamed on wrongful Hezbollah practices. In some cases, these attacks constitute war crimes."

At least 646 Lebanese, mostly civilians, have died in the strikes. The mounting toll, compounded by Sunday's bombing in Qana, has fuelled international outcry against Israel's tactics in the three-week-old war.

Israel says its strikes destroy Hezbollah infrastructure and stop rocket attacks that have killed 56 and caused large-scale evacuations in northern Israel.

HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth said in the many cases of civilian Lebanese deaths investigated by the rights group, the location of Hezbollah members or their weapons stores appeared to have no bearing on the areas attacked.

"Hezbollah fighters must not hide behind civilians. That's an absolute. But the image that Israel has promoted of such shielding as the cause of so high a civilian death toll is wrong," he said in the statement.

The report said that this included strikes against civilian vehicles fleeing the violence in southern Lebanon, which Israel says is the targeting of Hezbollah arms and their transport routes.

"Israeli forces have fired with warplanes and artillery on dozens of civilian vehicles, many flying white flags," it said.

"However, none of the evidence gathered by Human Rights Watch or reported to date by independent media sources indicate that any of the attacks on vehicles documented in the report resulted in Hezbollah casualties or the destruction of weapons."

HRW said it based its report on interviews with survivors of attacks, visits to blast sites and information from hospitals, aid groups, Lebanon's government and the Israel Defence Forces.